We're an anomaly for 2024: a thread that grew for the third consecutive year. More reading (and more reporting on reading) is good! Here's to another year of good books. Tonight we finished the audio version of a book I just finished reading, too: Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. What a total kick in the pants. It's book one of a series in a subgenre called litRPG, or literature that follows the rules of a role playing game. Carl and his girlfriend's show cat - Princess Donut - are pulled into a multi-level dungeon when most of the rest of humanity is wiped out. I liked the story and appreciated the game stuff while my wife the huge gamer (she's in like the top 1% of XBox users in terms of achievements, gamer score, and the like - she's a die-hard) absolutely adored the game stuff. She laughed out loud every chapter at least a couple of times. My only problem is in the timing of my discovery of the series. In September, it went from self-published to hard cover printing from Ace Books (sci-fi branch of Penguin Random House). They published the first three of seven and will roll out 4-6 in March-April-May; they also somehow cleared out all of the old copies from every used book seller I can access. So I will have to move slowly. All of the audio versions are out, but I think I will only really enjoy listening after reading and then just whenever I am in the room with my wife while she listens.
Duke, Vol. 1: Knowing is Half the Battle - Joshua Williamson Joshua Williamson has been given the writing duties for the new GI Joe series and it started off with a limited run of 5 issues giving the backstory on this version of Conrad Hauser, a.k.a. Duke. This ties nicely into one issue of the Transformers comic so far, giving us the motivation for Duke personally and the reasoning for creating GI Joe. We do have one major character from the 80s version that has technically switched sides, and the epilogue lets us see a couple of the other top GI Joe names being given a surprising role that hasn't shown up just yet in the regular comic run (2 issues in so far). This is the best storyline in the Energon Universe so far.
West with Giraffes -- Lynda Rutledge I asked my best friend, as I do every year, to "gift" me with the best book she's read all year and this is what was waiting for me under the tree this year. I think she choose a book she thought I would like more than the best book she's read this year because, while this one is enjoyable, it's not really very good per se. In real life, the San Diego Zoo bought two giraffes in 1938, the first on the continent, and they arrived in New York at the same time as the infamous Yankee Clipper storm of that same year. The giraffes were fortunate to have survived, but the truck that was supposed to carry them to California didn't. And the driver was a drunk. This book is the imagined story of the westward journey and the 18 year-old kid who replaced the driver. A fun, enjoyable read with which to start the new year.
I couldn't really define post-modern in the literary sense but I know it when I see it. And this mutherfather is as post-modern as it gets.
Italo Calvino is a name I have not heard since the 1980's, so long ago I don't remember anything by him that I read...but I know it was something. Looking at the overview, I know it was not this novel. Sounds like fascinating and frustrating read.
I find some post modern literature frustrating. For example, I would argue to my death that Waiting For Godot is the biggest piece of shit ever published in the English language. But this is whimsical, not frustrating.
Word on Fire Bible: The Pentateuch a Catholic edition with commentary ranging from rabbis and church fathers to contemporary philosophers, theologians and anthropologists by Moses. A pretty good edition. I'd read Genesis and Exodus more than once each, but the others I haven't read except in excerpts. Leviticus and Numbers will never be read again by me, though I can see Deuteronomy getting another read through. Deuteronomy 25: 11-12 was my favorite. Says quite a bit about the lives being lived by the people at that time if you need this rule: If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts,you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity. The King James version has it... When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.
Numbers is the most long winded way possible to say that when the Israelites returned to the promised land, it required everyone to rebuild and not just the spiritual or political leaders.
Well, sure. Waiting For Godot exists to frustrate. There's no characters, no plot, no beauty. It's not pointless, I suppose, in the same way painting needed Jackson Pollock. But it does not spark any joy whatsoever. The world is a more frustrating place with Godot in it. But that could hardly be said of James Joyce or indeed Italo Calvino IMO.
The only "acting" performance I ever did was a staged reading of Waiting for Godot we decided to do. We abandoned the project half way through. It just wasn't worth the effort. My senior seminar was a 16 week exploration of Joyce's Ulysses. I aced the course, but kept thinking "At least, it's not Finnegan's Wake." I did get a nice letter of recommendation for law school from the professor (and I have cursed him ever since. ). As for "needing" Jackson Pollock, Pollock is pretty pointless (although not as pointless as Rothko. F*CK that guy).
Cobra Commander, Vol. 1: Determined to Rule the World - Joshua Williamson We get a mixture of some of the different backstories for Cobra Commander from the Marvel and cartoon days. Cobra-La and its residents are explored in more depth while explaining the motivation for their brief appearance in Void Rivals. We get a few old favorites like Major Bludd, Scrap-Iron, and some of the Dreadnocks as CC sets up Springfield, USA as his base of operations.
Funny, I have that same reaction. Jackson Pollock's work is interesting even if it doesn't spark much joy for me. Rothko's is uninteresting and joyless. If I was sitting on the toilet and had to choose between looking at a Mark Rothko masterpiece and the back of a shampoo bottle, well, hey, what do you know, Pert now comes in five different formulae.
The Kingdom,The Power, and The Glory by Tim Alberta It's a tale of American Evangelicals and their relationship with Trump and the author's experiences with them. Looks like an interesting read.
Scarlett, Vol. 1: Special Mission Another story of a foundational character in GI Joe lore. This one revolved around a secret weapon, familiar characters like Storm Shadow and Jinx, and some intriguing interactions with the Arashikage Clan. This was more focused than the Duke and Cobra Commander stories and moved at a brisk pace. Great action and it settles the role of one of our main protagonists prior to the launch of the new comic series.
Sheepfarmer's Daughter -- Elizabeth Moon Pretty standard hero's journey told in the familiar three-part trilogy. I really like the mercenary ecosystem Moon has created. Lords create armies and then hire themselves out to whoever needs an army. Train in the spring, battle over summer and fall, home for the holidays. Never read anything like it. I also like the notion that it is the mercenaries who fight with honor moreso than the militias. Paks (our sheepfarmer's daughter) is a grunt in this book. She's injured all the time. She must sit out every third battle. It's very realistic in that regard. Again, pretty unique to my experience. Everyone around Paks dies. Just about. She's a grunt. As I said, all very realistic. But if this were Harry Potter, Ron and Hermione would be dead before Christmas. Elizabeth Moon really knows how medieval battles were fought. She might be the best fantasy writer that I've read in this regard. But her excellence in this field is wasted on me. I don't care how the battles are fought and I typically just gloss over that, just like I don't really care for car chases in movies. The good guy either gets away or he crashes, let the story move along faster without the chases. The blurbing on the book kind of turned me off. Someone actually wrote this: This is the first work of high heroic fantasy I've seen that has taken the work of Tolkein, assimilated it totally and deeply and absolutely, and produced something altogether new." LOL. No, it's not. It's most definitely not Tolkeinian. To me, what sets Tolkein apart is the sense that the events of this age are rooted in a past that is part of the present. The tale of the ring, and Sauron's rise and fall and resurrection and fall again spans milennia and if Sauron is successful this time around, civilization will end. This book is two years in a young woman's life. I liked it. But it does Moon a disservice to compare her work to Tolkein.
Destro, Vol. 1: The Enemy - Dan Watters We get an updated version of the history of the Destro Clan, a look at the other major players in the GI Joe arms dealer world, a dirty dealer on the GI Joe side, and a look at how the various enemies of GI Joe come together in the expected historical alliance.
@Dr. Wankler a few months ago said At Midnight On The 31st Of March was worth a look and I thank him for it. A rare thing, iambic pentameter, in modern novels. It's so seldom seen and yet brings such delight and joy, this verse.
knocked off two books yesterday. Becoming Dallas Willard: The Formation of a Philosopher, Teacher, and Christ Follower a biography of an interesting midwestern-born guy who went on to become big in religious circles as well as making a huge contribution to philosophy (specifically, phenomenology) by Gary W. Moon. And... My Life Among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority a classic work of cultural criticism that I will likely never assign in a class because it's pretty damn difficult by Philip Rieff. I was a bit surprised to find an Harper's essay by a grad school classmate of mine singled out as an example of Deathworks. Rieff is often classified as "conservative" but anyone who can read will see that much of what Americans call "conservative" is death served on a platter.
AJ Baime's Dewey Defeats Truman: The 1948 Election and the Battle for America's Soul is excellent. Five sections, with four of them top notch and the other a bit tedious (but only because that part of the election - nationwide train-based campaigns - was also a slog). It's easy to forget how chaotic the years between the end of World War Two and the boom that followed were, and then too there's lots that is parallel to today. I recommend this one.